Science & Society

The course will be structured by social/political issues in which debate has been informed by the application of scientific methodology, information, data or theories. Examples of broader issues that might be considered include:

Science and Objectivity:

• Does scientific objectivity exist? What is the relationship between science and political or religious ideology? Are there biases of race, class, gender, religion which influence scientific findings? Should scientific findings come with labels, such as "communist science," "feminist science," "Christian science," "corporate science," etc.?

Science and Value:

• Is science value-free or does it reflect a set of values? What values govern science and what values ought to govern science? To what extent can we look to science to clarify questions of value? How is a society to decide which scientific investigations deserve the greater share of societal resources?  Does the source of funding for scientific research affect the findings of that research? To what extent should scientists be held responsible for the uses and abuses of technologies based upon their findings? Does the scientist have a unique duty to society? How do scientific claims to be quantitative and objective affect their ability to influence public policy?

Science, Pseudo-Science, Junk-Science and Scientific Fraud:

• Are there any features of the scientific enterprise that definitively distinguish it from other human intellectual enterprises? Are scientific findings valuable in virtue only of being scientific? Are there clear criteria by which we can distinguish science proper from junk science, pseudoscience, and irrational belief? How, if at all, does junk science differ from propaganda? How do fraud and misconduct in science affect the scientific enterprise?

Representations of Science in Popular Media

• How does science appear on television and in films? How do museums, textbooks, and science education, science in the press and popular scientific writing portray science? Does the representation of science in science fiction reflect societal views of science? Is science for children? Has science become the new religion? Is science a worldview?

Examples of more specific issues that might be considered include:

• God and science; Darwinism and social theory; intelligence testing and the idea of human norms; reproductive technologies; genetic modification of foods; eugenics and the idea of human norms; gender-bipolarism and the gender classification of inter-sex children; the inclusion of homosexuality in the DSM-III; nuclear energy and nuclear weapons; global warming; mass extinction of species; ecology and the use of resources in the developing world; pharmaceutical testing and research; science with corporate mandate and oversight; social control and the social sciences; socio-biology and gender role stereotypes; the perception and treatment of mental illness.

However the course topics are chosen, the course would introduce students to a variety of views about the nature of science. The course may also deal with different views of the history of interactions between scientists, scientific data, scientific theory and societal concerns have influenced and been influenced by views about the nature of science.